مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Evliya Çelebi’s Book Seyahatnâme as a Source in the Research about Karagöz

Abstract :

Seyahatnâme (Book of Travels) is a book which was written by Evliya Çelebi in the 17th century. Evliya Çelebi traveled Ottoman Lands for a long time and gathered what he had seen and heard in a ten volume book which is called Seyahatnâme. Along with having vari-ous folkloric elements Seyahatnâme contains important information about traditional Tur-kish theatre.Karagöz is a galanty show which is based on dialogues of two dimensional puppets’ shadows’ reflection on a curtain. The show has two main characters called Karagöz and Hacivat. Whether they really lived or not, if so, when and where they lived and when this game first appeared is not exactly known. The available information about these two characters is generally based on the narrations of the practitioners of the game.As the oldest record available about kara-göz, Seyahatnâme is one of the most signifi-cant sources used in the works in this field. However; inadequency, censorship and rea-ding errors in the old editions of Seyahatnâme sometimes have caused incomplete unders-tanding and misunderstanding of this valuable work. In this article it is examined how Evliya Çelebi’s book Seyahatnâme is dealed by the researchers and identified which information is found out about karagöz based on the last edition. Meanwhile recent information which was obtained from Evliya Çelebi’s book Seya-hatnâme on Şeyh Küşteri (Şüşteri) about whom no clear information related to this topic is found in any kind of sources is put forward in this article.